Swallow the World! Tahm Kench guide.

”The whole world’s a river, and I’m its king.”
Tahm Kench travels Runeterra’s waterways, feeding his insatiable appetite with the misery of the unsuspecting. The singularly charming gourmand savors every moment of his victims’ suffering. A deal with Two-Coats may carry you to wherever you wish, but your journey will most assuredly end in the depths of despair.

Introduction

Support your teammates by licking, spitting and swallowing as much champions as possible!

*Swap to Farsight Alteration at Lv9 -> perfect for deep vision, keep track of cooldown to use it directly when available in bushes

FIRST item: Eye of the Oasis

Why?

– GREAT gold income

– WARDS four of them, vision of dark places to get knowledge where enemies hide giving you safety or surprising the lonely enemy with your team

– GREAT sustain (mp and hp) early game, even better hp sustain later in game

SECOND item: Frozen Mallet (Get Ruby Crystals first when building)

THIRD item: Warmog’s Armor (Get Giant’s Belt first when building)

Why?

Tahm Kench is a tank, the passive of his ult is based off how much HP you have, the more HP you got the higher your magic damage with abilities AND basic attacks, and since basic attacking is a really frequent thing you do as Tahm Kench, to stack An Acquired Taste, you’ll deal loads more damage aswell as slow the enemies even more because of the unique passive of Frozen Mallet. You shouldn’t build Warmog’s Armor second because you wouldn’t have more than 3000HP and you’d miss out on the unique passive. Building Warmog’s Armor as third item gives you massive sustain and you could pretty much stick forever in lane.

4th item: Mercury’s Treads

Why?

Tahm Kench is a tank, thus also a frontliner, most teams have alot of crowd control making Mercury’s Treads a nice pick.

5th and 6th items (choose two):

The four options (what part to buy first when building the item)

Dead Man’s Plate (Get Giant’s Belt first)

Spirit Visage (Get Spectre’s Cowl first)

Randuin’s Omen (Get Giant’s Belt first)

Locket of the Iron Solari (Get Crystalline Bracer first then Aegis of the Legion)

Why?

All of these items give a great boost to your HP and thus your damage will be even more insane. Your choices will depend on the enemy team.

– If the enemy team has atleast 3 AP champions (or 2 AP carrying really hard), you buy Spirit Visage then Locket of the Iron Solari

– If the enemy team AD and AP damage is balanced, you buy Dead Man’s Plate first because it gives a TON of HP and a nice speed buff, which is extra nice if you can work around with tier 1 boots, AND it gives alot of armor, now you need some magic resist, if your own team is doing really bad go Spirit Visage (selfish item so you can carry the game) if you’re not having your day and are doing bad get Locket of the Iron Solari don’t forget to make the most out of the aura/active.

When the game you’re in doesn’t want to end:

Don’t forget to upgrade your boots and get Elixir of Iron

Skill Sequence

Max out skills in this order: R>Q>W>E

Start with Q, poke and slow enemies in lane from range

At lv 2 go W, swallow minions and poke enemies, swallow a teammate in trouble to save them, swallow enemies to suppress them making them unable to do anything

Get Exhaust and Flash, no discussion. Both can get you out of sticky situations but can also get your teammates to kill the exhausted person really easy as it reduces their movement speed, attack speed, armor, magic resist and damage dealt for a good 2.5 seconds

15% summoner spell cooldown reduction gives you room to play a bit more aggressive

Flash has a cooldown of 300secs. -> 255secs. or 210secs. with Distortion

Exhaust has a cooldown of 210secs. -> 178.5secs.

Pros / Cons

Pros:

– Powerful ganks and rotations

– Save nearby teammates out of very sticky situations

– Great crowd control, slows, stuns and suppressions

– Very tanky, high sustain

– Strong self shield

– High damage

Cons:

– Fisherman Fizz, will swallowing Fizz make Tahm Kench preggy?

Vision & General Gameplay

Before I start talking about where you should exactly place your wards as a support or any role you’re playing as, I want to give insight about certain topics that alot players forget or are not aware of.

First of all, what is vision?

Vision is information of the map that your enemy team may not know about, basically you’re talking about advantages.

Two examples are:

– You have a ward placed in the river. What does this mean? This means you can spot an enemy champion, most likely the enemy jungler but also the rest of the enemy team, since anyone may roam to other lanes at almost any point.

– You have a ward placed between the blue buff and gromp of the enemy jungle. What does this mean? Not only can you spot the enemy jungler/rest of their team, but you have vision of the enemies jungle camps aswell. Meaning you may know the route or where the enemy jungler may be/has been.

Once you have your vision you need MAP AWARENESS. What is map awareness and what is the important factor that goes with it?

Why do we want map awareness?

– Knowing in what situation you are in

– Where your champion is located

– In what kind of dangers you may be

– What you’re risking

You want to know in what situation you are in because you don’t want to die from a gank or a roam. Therefore the other important factor is being aware of what the enemies team composition is (as well as your own team). This means you should know what the enemies are capable of doing.

For example the enemy jungler is Kindred or Nidalee. You should know these champions have a wall hop. This means your wards that give you protection from being ganked may get bypassed and giving you false hope of not dying. You should not only be aware of the enemy jungler because roams, spells and champion skills that have teleports may get you in trouble too.

So how do we get good at knowing in what situations you are currently in?

– You get map awareness by looking frequently at the minimap

– Frequently is like once every 10 or so seconds

I never look at the minimap, is this a disadvantage for me?

Yes, this is definitely a big factor. You can train yourself by looking more frequently at the minimap. You don’t have to look every 10 seconds at it if you find it too distracting. Try looking at it atleast once every 30 seconds, then start lowering it for yourself.

When you’ve checked your minimap you must immediately think about certain things and inform your teammates in an efficient way.

When do I inform my teammates?

– You inform your teammates when enemies are missing for about 10secs

How do I inform my teammates quick and safe?

– Use your ping functions on the minimap

– In options when you press esc, hotkeys, communication you have Alert Ping and Retreat Ping

– When you press your hotkey for either Alert or Retreat, aim it at the location on the minimap, hold your mousebutton on the minimap, you may drag it around and release it for more ping options such as On My Way, Missing Enemy, Danger, Assist Me.

For example, your top laner has placed a ward in the top river. The enemy jungler goes through the top river and you notice this. What should you do as a support in the bottom lane? You can ping Danger at the location where you spot the enemy jungler so that the rest of your team notices this too. Once you know this information of the enemy jungler being in the top river, you also know that you’re most likely not going to be ganked. Unless there’s some kind of teleport factor that you should be aware of.

If there are 3 enemies in the top lane that means there can only be 2 enemies in the rest of the map. Therefore you may make plays in other lanes, play more aggressive, try to push out waves, get a tower and take jungle camps on the way back if you’re in the position to do so. Otherwise your team should rotate to other lanes to save towers in the top lane.

Now that we have a better understanding of how it all works. Let’s talk more about vision, wards and how to use your wards efficiently.

Your options are:

– Stealth Ward -> from Sightstone or the upgrades from it

– Vision Ward -> 75 gold in the shop

– Farsight Alteration -> at Lv9 from Warding Totem

– Rift Scuttler

All of these options are used in a different way.

– Stealth wards have a limited use. Per champion you can only have a maximum of 3 on the map at the same time. Therefore you should use them wisely and efficiently. Don’t place 2 wards on the same location or near each other, try to spread them around and place them in bushes so that if an enemy goes in a bush you or your team can still attack them. Place the wards for protection if you’re being pushed in, or try to place them in the enemy jungle for deeper vision, without risking to die, around the OBJECTIVES that you’re going for (towers/dragon/baron).

– Vision wards are wards that give vision, but are visible to enemies if they spot them. They last forever until poked down by the enemies, they give vision of enemy stealth wards and stealthed enemy champions. You can only have one of these on the map per champion. They aren’t free so try to protect them by attacking the enemy. They are used to deny vision of a certain spot, so if the enemy team wards nearby you can clear out that ward. The best use for it is to place them in bushes where they will last long but give good information.

– Farsight Alteration are wards that give vision but are visible to enemies if they spot them. Don’t waste them by putting them in a bush where there is already a ward. Keep track of the cooldown and spam these in any bush for deep vision. It is also effective to place them in bushes of your own jungle, they are more likely to last longer but can still give vision of enemies invading your jungle.

– Rift Scuttler, take these with your team whenever dragon or baron is a possible objective for either team. This vision cannot be removed using Vision Wards or anything, so enemies that are about to do dragon or baron will be spotted either way. Also it gives a nice movement speed buff that may help you win teamfights that break out.

When you ward be careful, it is not worth dying to place a ward. It is also not worth going halfway across the map to place a Vision Ward, you lose too much time running around and you’ll fall behind on xp/levels/gold. However it is worth if your team is about to make plays on that side of the map.

Tips & Tricks

– Global ult, game changing, turn fights around or you can gank someone out of position easily, reactivate ult to go solo, kind of like a Twisted Fate ultimate except you can bring a friend along for extra fun times

– You can NOT use your ult if you swallowed an enemy, so no kidnapping enemies to your own base

– If you cancel your ult, gets interrupted or no teammate joins the trip within 15seconds, your ult will go on a 10 second cooldown, the channel takes about 1 second, it takes about 0.5 second to pop out of the ground, meaning the enemy team has 0.5 second to respond to the ult animation

– The passive of your ult gives you more magic damage, for damaging abilities AND basic attacks, based off how much HP you have, this is the sole reason why building HP on Tahm Kench not only makes him very tanky, but also gives him more damage output

– Your E passive stores taken damage called Grey Health, if you take no damage for 2.5 seconds the Grey Health gets consumed quickly and it will regen a percentage of your Grey Health

– Your E active turns your Grey Health into a shield slowly decaying over 6 seconds, this shield is very useful and powerful if you get focused, which is your goal in teamfights, being the frontliner and soaking up damage, the timing is very important because you don’t want to wait until you’re almost dead and then activate it, you’d lose almost all of your HP and then gain a massive shield, no one will focus you when they see that big of a shield, what you want to do is activate it when you have about 1/3 or 1/2 hp left of the moment you take the first hit, meaning your shield should be around 50-66% of your current health, your shield doesn’t look that huge anymore and enemies will stay on you while your damage dealers can finish off the enemies

– Your W can swallow minions/monsters, you can then spit them back out against other minions, walls or enemy champions, dealing aoe damage

– Your W can swallow teammates, saving low health or miss positioned teammates, inside your belly they cannot take extra damage, it cancels lock on abilities such as Caitlyn ult, kind of like a Zhonya’s statis, you can spit them out yourself after a few seconds, they can get out themselves whenever they want to or for the maximum duration of the swallow, you run faster if you swallowed a teammate and run towards an enemy for initiation or catching up on an enemy with low hp

– Your W can spit teammates over small walls

– Your Q is your main range poke and also applys a strong slow

– Your W can swallow minions/monsters from a distance DURING your Q, for safe ranged wave clear or safe steal of jungle monsters/crabs from enemies

– Your basic attacks, Q and W apply stacks on enemy champions, stacking up to 3 times, at 3 stacks your Q stuns the enemy champion, the stacks don’t get consumed, you can also swallow an enemy with W at 3 stacks, making them unable to do anything for a few seconds, you can move very slowly and direct where to spit the enemy out

– If you’re close to your enemy champion with 2 stacks, basic attack them for a third stack before you Q them so they get stunned from the third stack (if the enemy is further away you have no choice but to Q slow them at 2 stacks), keep your W available so you can swallow the enemy right after the stun for maximum crowd control

– Be precise with your W and know who to swallow, for example you are in a 2v1 with a teammate, all three of you are low with the enemy having 3 stacks, you can swallow the enemy and one shot him, if you swallow your teammate to save him or missclick on them you may end up dying by the enemy, and afterwards your teammate may die aswell, be aware what enemies are the danger and what teammates are important to stay alive and if they are in danger.

And to end it with a bang, take a look at world superstar Faker and some of his SoloQ highlights playing Tahm Kench!